I just noticed that my favourite page since years will stop. Since I started browsing the web it was my first love and – unbelievable but true – my first bookmark ever. I couldn’t believe what i could see! All my favorite bands (and even more) I could join from my living room. It’s hard to describe today how many beautiful and wonderful hours we’ve spent together. This news blows my shoes off, and made me stop breathing for a day…
All my love belongs to you – not since the full nine passionate years you are here for dudes and dudettes like me – but I am a proud user and listener since 2002. In all those great years you shared the most amazing concert recordings with us.
This is so sad and frustrating because you gave me so much and now you close the doors this month. That is not a b-day present I wished for. The quality of the stream was superb during all those years, and your dream of streaming concerts to all of us… I really hoped would continue.
Decision to Kill
The fact is, a great number of record labels still won’t allow Fabchannel to record their artists. That’s still making me sad because this is the reason why they had to kill our beloved baby. I’m not sure how many of you knew about this service, so maybe couldn’t enjoy the full excitement that made this idea the best of all.
The Beginning
Fabchannel started in 2000 to create a promotional platform for the artists that play the Paradiso in Amsterdam. My first visit there was in 2000 and it was Candy Dulfer. 2000 was also the year of Counter-Strike and 56k Modems. It was a crazy time, without social media or labels that support the bands. Media attention for upcoming bands was decreasing on radio, TV and in newspapers. You can imagine how this was a bad thing for the fans, artists, the venue and the labels. Back in those days bands played live to promote their new album and even got tour support from their record label. But when no media covers your wonderful gig, only the fans in the venue can tell the rest of the world what a great album you have released.
The Idea
The idea behind Fabchannel came about because of the very poor return on investment for the bands and labels via other media outlets. By webcasting the show live and putting it in an on-demand archive afterwards, thousands of fans could enjoy the shows for years. But it wasn’t just this streaming - it was much much more. Fabchannel promoted the latest album release, made adverts, linked and used the social media as it came about, and helped on a very good way the bands sell more CD’s . Everybody was happy – or so we thought…..but, no!
Back to 2000 and those times when we mostly used our 56k modems and later switched to ISDN…even the majority of labels (major and independent) weren’t so enthusiastic about the internet. There was just this slow connection and a huge idea - to record the concerts in a high quality video format and archive these videos on the website so they can be accessed by fans around the world, on demand. At this time, broadband internet and online video were still promises of the future. Services like Youtube weren’t even in our heads yet. The plan and hope Fabchannel had was that the labels and music companies would start experimenting with this and embrace it. But, as of 2009 they did not.
Selling Concerts
I can remember the year 2007. Fabchannel asked the audience and friends to make and help find a plan to keep this project alive and make some money to survive. The idea was – selling the concerts. Lots of viewers agreed with that bc we all loved (including me) these videos, and wanted to have them as download or DVD. They pitched this idea to the labels, “but not one of them saw it as an interesting business model,” to quote this right from the page. The problem was that Fabchannel had no rights to sell them themselves. It was necessary to get approval from the labels.
A lot of the companies the labels work with these days are companies that need music to promote another product. Fabchannel does not. We don’t use music as a marketing tool to sell phones, jeans or soda pop. And we do not have the budgets to buy the content. For us the product is the music.
If you have to pay 10 Euros per month to watch a concert archive and live webcasts you would want to see the big names right? To make this all work you, as visitor, had to help too – by promoting on social media platforms, signing up, spreadiing the word, and watching the adverts that came with the stream. But, what if the number comes from the original blog and 80% of the visitors don’t sign up? It was obvious that it was necessary to get a lot of pageviews and unique visitors from users worldwide to make this happen.
A lot of the companies the labels work with these days are companies that need music to promote another product. Fabchannel does not. We don’t use music as a marketingtool to sell phones, jeans or sodapop.
And it worked…for a while. But all plans need support and help from all sides, and this didn’t happen. To use a sentence from the blog again, “although a lot of labels are facing serious problems these days, they seem to be incapable of starting meaningful partnerships with more than a few worldwide players.”
I recommend this as a very good read. It’s a post i found on TECHCrunch, written by Michael Arrington. It helped me to bring more light in this dark time.
The Dream and Concept
Like Fabchannel, I still believe in this concept. It worked as a promotional platform in the days CD’s were sold at concerts, and it works today as a powerful promotion/sales platform still – with the right support. After reading the blog post I recommended above, you will understand and see, that the next few years will be getting even more difficult with sponsoring or advertising.
Goodbye
Its not possible to find the words I want to send you from Austria…because you gave me so much joy and love and nice music. My heart is bleeding right now because you were a part of my life over the years. You gave me so much. I love you Fabchannel and want to sincerely thank you for being my friend, my hope, and my love!
They are pulling the plug of the online archive on Friday 13th of March, until that time i enjoy all my favorite concerts once more, and hope we meet again one day.
